Don't bother trying to explain it to him. It's already explained in the OP; he just can't be bothered to actually read threads before spamming his sig ad in them.

That being the case, we have four votes for Nc3 (Timelord2067, jjacob, languagehasmeaning, and myself) and two for b3 (actmyname and Taras). Ordinarily I would wait to see if Taras is convinced to change his vote, but at this point it doesn't make any difference. Looks like we're going with 10. Nc3.

So? I'd almost be willing to sacrifice a pawn to get a position like this. But e-pawn is safe. It can be guarded by the bishop and remaining knight and then the f-pawn if absolutely necessary (though I'd rather keep the f-pawn in front of the king).

Um, the whole purpose of a finachettoed bishop is the defend the central squares from a distance. What is the bishop for if not to guard the pawn?

Nothing! You don't attack during the opening! We're controlling the d-file to shut down Black's options. Only once we get the other bishop out and both rooks together do we attack.

Good. Black wastes valuable time dealing with the threat. Meanwhile, we finish development and mount a real attack.

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No, Bxf3 is a mistake for Black. He trades away his strong bishop. Naturally, we should do nothing to prevent this.

Not sure if trolling or you don't understand standard algebraic notation.

Some time. But not now.

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No. We shouldn't push our kingside pawns after castling kingside unless necessary, eg, to create an escape square for the king.

Um, we have a better chance of winning? That's what usually happens when the opponent plays bad moves!

Boris Spassky would want a word with you. After 12. Nbd2, Black's queenside is extremely weak.

But allows the very strong 12. Ne3.

This is the best refutation. It's a decent trade for White; that Black knight is quite annoying. But more importantly, it opens the d-file at a moment when White can immediately take full advantage of it with the rook and queen. This far outweighs the weakness of doubled pawns, which is generally overrated by novices. White is clearly better after 10. Nc3 b4? 11. Ne4 Nxe4 12. dxe4 ... 13. Rd1.

I wouldn't. 10. b3 is bad enough to merit a question mark, in my opinion. 8. d3 committed us to developing the queen's bishop to the kingside. We can't afford to waste a tempo on a queenside fianchetto. We need to get our rooks together as soon as possible, and that means developing the knight and bishop in two moves, not three. We can then break on the d-file and begin our attack. In games between masters and amateurs, extremely indecisive moves like 10. b3? are exactly the sort of mistake that the master will capitalise on.

Definitely Tor. You can see the old Torbutton plugin in the screenshot.

That's a no-brainer. Nc3 controls the centre, puts pressure on b5, and defends the e-pawn. Nd2 achieves nothing, and is actively harmful as it blocks the retreat of the easily-attacked dark-squared bishop. The bishop's vulnerability is one of my reasons for wanting to play Nc3 first: it keeps Black's knight away from d5, making Bf4 or Be3 safer (we don't want to trade our bishop for a knight at this stage).

Agreed. 10. Nc3 is strongest.

Finally, someone else can see sense.

Exactly. Although the traditional idea behind the Réti opening is to wait for Black to mess up the centre before you do, that only applies to pawn structure.

Absolutely not! All else being equal, never trade an active piece for an inactive one! Our queen is well-placed (Black isn't forcing it away just for the fun of it!) while his isn't doing much at all, and this is a situation we want to maintain as long as possible. Conversely, Black will likely want to trade queens when he can, and may try to force the issue.

We can after Bg5 and trading the bishops, but why would you want to trade queens in the first place?

Huh? No, he can always just block the bishop with Nd5.

It seems 9. Qc2 has overwhelming support.

Until Black drives it away with 9... Nd5.

What are you talking about? Qh4 is perfectly safe. If Black wants to mess up his pawn structure chasing the queen around, I say let him.

The guideline to "move every piece first" means to move them to squares where they can be useful. c2 isn't a particularly useful square for the queen, while h4 is, as it helps control both the centre and Black's kingside, and makes Bg5 safe by pinning the rook's pawn. How can you say it's useless?

Too passive. I say we keep the queen on the forth rank with 9. Qh4 to maintain the pressure.

Software won't help you if the hardware is damaged. You've probably already crashed the heads just by powering it up. Make no further attempts to connect the damaged hard drive. You need to take it to a data recovery lab capable of handling water-damaged drives. This will cost a lot more than $150 and don't expect them to give you good news, either. Sorry.

You're 11 minutes too late, but I'll let it slide. We need a tiebreaker. d3 or Nc3?

Okay, so we have three votes for d3 (jjacob, languagehasmeaning, and myself), two votes for d4 (abacus and sourgummies), and one vote for Qb3 (actmyname). I actually prefer Nc3 or Qb3, but I'm still going with d3 to break the tie. If there are no new suggestions in the next 24 hours, Team Bitcointalk is going with 8. d3.

Guys, this is the guy from the Flat Earth thread who doesn't understand how gravity works. This is relevant to the question because 6378.13 is Earth's equatorial radius in kilometres. OP is really asking "will a straight line 1 kilometre long across the Earth's surface go 1.95982208596 centimetres underground? (accurate to within 6 decimal places, or a tenth of a micron)", which is plainly false as it disregards the fact that the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and local topography over a 1 kilometre distance will vary by much more than 1.95982208596 centimetres, let alone 0.1 microns. It is not clear what OP hopes to prove beyond his ignorance of basic science and mathematics.

Yes.

That's not even remotely true.

If you feel you have no chance to win, the proper thing to do is resign. Wasting everybody's time with this sort of silliness is not only extremely poor etiquette, it's against the rules in most tournaments. You can get disqualified for trying this in real life.

Since Nc3 seems unpopular, I'll go for d3.

Now we have two votes for d4, two for d3, and one for Qb3. Actmyname, are you willing to break the tie by changing your vote to one of d4 or d3?

8. Nc3.

I disagree. It's an even worse time than ever. It blocks off useful escapes from 8... b5 and we don't even have our rooks together yet. 8. d3 is better if you just want to get the bishop out.

So far we have two votes for d4, one for Qb3, and one for Nc3. I will support Qb3 or d3 if nobody else likes Nc3, since either of those are better than d4 in my opinion.